The young honor roll student Christopher Wallace was introduced to the crack game by the Junior M.A.F.I.A. clique (a Brooklyn street gang the rap group took their name from) at the age of 13. Biggie dropped out of high school at the age of seventeen to sell crack. His mother insists that "he didn't need to sell crack. He never went hungry." Biggie would later state that crack dealers were his role models. Whatever his reasons, dealing is the way some young black males choose to make a living in the ghetto. Of course, his career choice involved certain risks, not all of which paid off. After being thrown out of the house by his mother who couldn't handle his new "profession", Biggie continues to sell crack to survive.

  Like many other dealers up North, Biggie and his crew decide to take their street business down South where the prices and profits were much bigger. He moves to North Carolina and gets arrested for selling crack. The Brooklyn native spends 9 months in jail before returning to New York. He faces mounting financial pressure as he awaits the birth of his daughter T'Yanna. In addition, his mother is diagnosed with breast cancer. Biggie is so distraught he can't get up enough nerve to visit her at the hospital. Doctors eventually remove the cancer before it spreads throughout Voletta's body. During that period, Biggie develops a close relationship with Kim Jones. She would later become Lil' Kim. "We would see each other in the neighborhood and we got close," said Kim. The pressure of paying bills gets even worse after T'Yanna is born.

  Biggie jumps back into the crack game, but starts to realize the dangers of the streets and turns his attention to rapping. He always rapped for leisure, but never took the art seriously. Still, after his release, the young man borrowed a friend's four-track tape recorder and laid down some basic rap tracks in a basement. Big Daddy Kane's turntablist DJ Mr. Cee gets hold of a tape Biggie and his DJ made. Mr. Cee passes it onto Matty C., who was in the midst of organizing The Source's Unsigned Hype column in 1992. Matty plays the tape for Uptown A&R, and Producer Sean "Puffy" Combs in a club. Combs wants to sign Biggie, so he warns him about the drug game. Puffy eventually left Uptown to form Bad Boy Records, and B.I.G. went with him. While waiting for the deal to go through, Christopher is again in need of money and heads back to North Carolina. "Puffy called me on Monday," he recalled, "and told me that the contracts would be ready on Tuesday. He said 'Come on up, and I'll have the check waiting for you.' I was gonna stay till Tuesday because it was near the first of the month and we were gonna get those crackhead's welfare checks. The same night I was on the train coming back to New York, the cops ran up in our spot."

  The Notorious B.I.G. first made a name for himself with a remix of Mary J. Blige's "What's the 411?" and a track on the Who's the Man? soundtrack, "Party And Bullshit". The Notorious B.I.G. finally makes the transition from street money to royalty checks. "My advance from Bad Boy was just petty money, like 12, 20 G's." Biggie wanted his first single to be "Machine Gun Funk," but Puffy knew which songs would take him to a wider audience. The singles "Juicy," and "Big Poppa" achieve gold and platinum sales, respectively, helping push his debut album Ready To Die quickly to platinum status, making him the first New York rapper to do so in years. The Notorious B.I.G. was named Rapper of the Year at the 1995 Billboard Awards.

  Before signing with Bad Boy Entertainment, Biggie Smalls develops a friendship with rap superstar Tupac Shakur in 1993 on the set of John Singleton's Poetic Justice. The radical rapper takes Smalls under his wing. Biggie recalls that on the movie set, Tupac kept playing B.I.G.'s first single, "Party and Bullshit." Flattered, he met Tupac at his home in L.A., where the two hung out, puffed lah, and chilled. Ironically, the relationship would change both of their lives.

  On August 4th, 1994 The Notorious B.I.G. wed backup singer/songwriter Faith Evans. At the video shoot for Faith's "You Used to Love Me," they could be seen giggling and calling each other nicknames (he was Riccardo, she was Moschino). They met at a Bad Boy photo shoot and were married nine days later. There was much speculation that the marriage was a publicity stunt by the two label mates, but Biggie has a different view. "I had my share of all kinds of women, I can't explain it. I just knew Faith was different. I wanted her locked down."  he said. "I married her after knowing her eight days and I was happy, That was my baby."

  Of course, his friends were buggin', especially his mom. She found out a month after they got married, and only because her sister called and said that she heard Biggie on the radio giving a big-up to his wife. Everyone believed she married him for his money, though at the time, Faith actually had more money than he did because of her song writing and background vocal work for the likes of Mary J. Blige, Color Me Badd, and Pebbles. At the accusations from his mother about Faith wanting him for his loot, Biggie said laughing, "Ma, what money? I owe you $300!".

  With gold and platinum singles, and his smash LP, Biggie becomes one of hip hop's biggest selling artists, single handedly leading the East Coast back to commercial dominance. But fame comes at a price. On November 30th 1994, while in New York on trial for sexual assault, Tupac Shakur was shot and robbed of $40,000 in jewelry at Manhattan's Quad Studios. Tupac would later accuse Biggie and Puffy being involved in the  robbery. Fanning the flames, Biggie releases the violent "Who Shot Ya," an eerie 1995 B-side single that feeds the public's growing speculation to the Brooklyn MC's involvement in the shooting. Both Biggie and Puffy deny the allegations.

  In June 1995 he is charged with allegedly assaulting and robbing a concert promoter. On May 6, Biggie was supposed to do a show in Camden, N.J., but when he got to Club Xscape, the promoter (and B.I.G.'s money) could not be found. Mark Pitts (B.I.G.'s manager) told Nate Banks Jr., who had brought Biggie to the club, to take them to see the promoter. Upset ticket holders followed Big in their own cars, joining the mission to find the promoter. When the caravan reached the promoter's crib, his brother came outside to say he wasn't home. According to Banks's attorney, Banks was then beaten up and robbed of his necklace, bracelet, watch, cellular phone, beeper, and $300 in cash. "When he was down, Christopher Wallace comes across the street and kicks him in the head," the attorney adds. "I saw the commotion," says Biggie. "I got out my truck, Mark said, `Get the fuck back in the truck,' and I did." Exactly who beat Banks down-and when-remains unclear. Later the same year, as he and a friend were leaving the Palladium in New York, a crowd of autograph-seekers harassed them, and after some words were exchanged, two of them hopped in a cab to flee. B.I.G. and the friend followed, caught up with the cab, and took baseball bats to the windows and occupants. Police raid Biggie's home in Teaneck, NJ in March 1996 and find 50 grams of marijuana, infra-red scopes and illegal guns with scratched-off serial numbers. On top of those criminal charges, B.I.G.'s marriage with Bad Boy R&B singer Faith Evans begins to sour. "Everybody's out trying to get everybody," Biggie said. "In this business you have to watch your back."

  The media has a field day using current and previous events to create the illusion of a East coast vs. West coast Rap war. This imaginary beef almost came true to life when Bad Boy (B.I.G.'s label) and Death Row (Tupac's label) get into a minor scuffle during the Soul Train Music Awards in Los Angeles. Tupac begins insinuating he slept with B.I.G.'s estranged wife Faith. Biggie chooses not to rebuttal. Sticking to his humorous persona, he only alludes to the drama. "Guns I bus 'em / problems wit my wife / don't discuss 'em," he rapped on Get Money (remix). The remix provides inspiration for Tupac's vicious "Hit 'Em Up." This now classic diss record was the climax of the so-called East Coast/West Coast rivalry, as Pac viciously disses Puffy, Lil' Cease, Lil' Kim, Bad Boy Entertainment, Junior M.A.F.I.A., Mobb Deep and Chino XL. He boldly states that he indeed slept with Faith, and of coarse she denies it.

  Biggie's friendship with fellow Brooklyn rapper Jay-Z begins to develop. The two MCs record a track aptly titled "Brooklyn's Finest" for Jay-Z's debut release Reasonable Doubt. B.I.G. downplays the beef between him and Tupac, by comedically alluding to the inflammatory statements made by Pac concerning the West Coast rapper's alleged sexual relationship with Faith: "If Fay had twins, she'd probably have two pacs. Get it? Tu-Pacs." "I got to make jokes about the shit," Biggie said. "I can't be a nigga running around all serious. The shit is so funny because nobody will ever know the truth. 'Pac says he fucked her. I asked Faith, 'You fucked him'? She said 'no.' So am I gonna hate her for the rest of my life thinking she did something, or am I gonna be a man about the situation?" "Tupac, at one point, was my dog," Biggie once said in an interview.

  B.I.G. kept extremely busy in the years between his two albums. He carried on a very public affair with Kim Jones, a.k.a. L'il Kim, and went on to produce her album Hardcore. He also appeared on R. Kelly's second solo album and shared studio time with the King of Pop himself, appearing on Michael Jackson's HIStory. Biggie even played himself on episodes of the TV shows New York Undercover and Martin.

  Biggie's success brings out a slew of haters. He has to contend with constant death threats as a result of Tupac's brutal 1996 murder and finds himself defending his lavish rhyme content against critics and contemporaries who label his music as materialistic. Other MCs begin copying his lyrical content of mansions, Versace, and Moet. Biggie has a simple explanation for critics. "...Lyrically I'd dust them off. I'd crush them. But those dudes hating and disrespecting the whole Baller living... when you get into the game and sign a deal, do just want to sell 300 units and live with your mother? No. You want to sell millions of records and buy the big house with the fence and have your daughter and all your kids playing in the big yard. You don't want to be that broke rapper. Why are you mad cause I'm happy (and) I got some money. I'm happy so that's why I talk about it."

  Biggie goes against the wishes of friends and family, and takes a trip to Los Angeles. While out on the West Coast, he films a movie-like video for the first single off his highly anticipated sophomore album Life After Death. Despite several death threats and the venomous atmosphere surrounding the East Coast/West Coast war, Biggie tries his best to rise above the controversy. With the release of his second album just weeks away, Biggie is ready to put an end to the bi-coastal beef. "...I'm getting ready to buy a house out in L.A.," he said. "I get love out here. And if they don't love me they are going to learn to love me."

  In March 1997 in Los Angeles. B.I.G. was on the West Coast for several events, doing advance press for his next release, Life After Death . . . 'Til Death Do Us Part. On March 9th, Biggie attended the Soul Train Music Awards and a Los Angeles party co-sponsored by Vibe, Qwest Records and Tanqueray at the Peterson Automotive Museum. Most of the night he sat with Puffy and then Def Jam CEO, Russell Simmons. The place was packed with people, celebrities, and girls who danced for Big at his table. Though he was still recovering from an automobile accident and walking with a cane, all in all he had a pretty good time and the place went wild when the DJ blasted Biggie's new single "Hypnotize". Shortly after midnight a fire marshall entered the museum and broke up the party as they had well exceeded the buildings capacity limit.

  At 12:35 a.m., Biggie left the museum and climbs into the passenger side of his rented GMC suburban. With his bodyguard D-Rock behind the wheel and Little Caesar of Junior M.A.F.I.A. in the back seat, he listened to tracks off his upcoming LP. A Chevy Blazer was behind carrying security guards. Another suburban was in front carrying Biggie's entorage and Puffy. The caravan eventually leaves the parking lot and makes a right onto Wilshire Boulevard and stopping at a red light. A dark colored car stops along the passenger side of B.I.G.'s truck, and moments later the driver of that vehicle stuck a 9mm handgun out of the window and opened fire. He fired off 6 to 10 shots, striking Biggie 7 times in the chest and abdomen. He loses consciousness almost immediately. After the car speeds off, Puffy jumps out and makes his way to Biggie. He and D-Rock try to move him, but he was too heavy. So Puffy propped him up in the seat, closed the door, D-Rock got back in the driver's seat, Puffy hops in the back seat with a distraught Lil' Caesar. They drive him to Ceders-Sinai Medical Center where emergency personnel help lift Biggie's lifeless body onto a stretcher. But he was dead on arrival, and Hospital officials said Biggie probably died immediately after being shot. At 1:15 a.m., he was pronounced dead at Ceders-Sinai, the same Hospital where Eazy-E died of AIDS two years earlier.

  Several theories to why Biggie was murdered arise. One source says Biggie was killed because he and a representative refused to pay a debt owed to California's Southside Crips gang for providing security. Some say the Crips began to extort Bad Boy for more money than they were actually owed. Others say that the murder was in direct retaliation to rival Tupac Shakur's September 13th 1996 assassination in Las Vegas. Both murders remain unsolved.

  On Tuesday, March 18th 1997, Biggie's funeral is held in Brooklyn, NY and attracts thousands of mourners. Fans were given a last chance to say good-bye as the motorcade carrying Notorious B.I.G.'s body drove though the Brooklyn neighborhood where he grew up. Filled with excitement, the overzealous fans cheered wildly, some jumping on the tops of parked cars, as the procession drove by with riders holding pictures of Notorious B.I.G. from windows. Police used pepper spray to disband crowds when skirmishes broke out. Ten people were arrested for disorderly conduct, seven officers suffered minor injuries and seven vehicles were damaged, according to police.

  The late 24-year-old rapper was dressed in a double-breasted white suit with a matching hat, a cream-colored silk shirt and a blue-grey tie. His mahogany coffin was lined with white velvet. Faith Evans, Notorious B.I.G.'s estranged wife with whom he recently had a son, sang a gospel tune at the funeral. Notorious B.I.G.'s uncle sang a song, and the rapper's mother, Voletta Wallace, read Bible passages. Sean "Puffy" Combs, president/CEO of Bad Boy Entertainment, delivered the eulogy. The funeral's program included a quotation from Biggie from the day before he was murdered: "I want to wake up with my kids. Get 'em ready for school and take 'em to school. I want to participate in all that. I want to see my kids get old." The service ended with Biggie's Miss U instrumental.

  On March 25, 1997 Biggie's Life After Death is released and receives favorable reviews. The double album goes on to sell 8 million copies. Biggie's death sends shockwaves throughout the hip-hop community. But through his untimely murder his popularity reaches legendary status. Bad Boy releases two tribute songs, The Lox's "We'll Always Love Big Poppa" and the massive hit "I'll Be Missing You" by Puff Daddy featuring Faith and R&B quartet 112 (on what would've been Biggie's 27th birthday, Puffy forgot the words to the song while performing at the Notorious B.I.G.'s charity fundraiser at New York's The Pier 60 in front of Biggie's mother, family and friends). On December 1, 1998 Puff Daddy presents a $3 million check to Biggie's mother. The controversial Bad Boy Records CEO and producer donates profits from the sales of "I'll Be Missing You," to a trust for the benefit of Biggie's two children. Voletta becomes chairwoman of the Christopher Wallace foundation. A movie based on the life and times of the Notorious B.I.G.'s entitled Ready To Die is given the green light by Voletta. Puff Daddy is continually criticized for utilizing the memory of Biggie on his highly lucrative No Way Out tour and various videos. Biggie's legacy lives on.

-© THUNDER